Openness to Technological Innovation, Supply Chain Resilience, and Operational Performance: Exploring the Role of Information Processing Capabilities

Abstract

Increasing volatility in the global economy since the 2009 financial crisis, including the USA–China trade war and recent COVID-19 outbreak, has compelled businesses to build resilience to respond quickly to unexpected disruptions. Consistent with organizational information processing theory (OIPT), we posit that openness to technological innovation helps to build information processing capabilities (i.e., interfunctional coordination and interpartner informational justice), which are required to build supply chain resilience (SCR) and improve performance. Structural equation modeling is used to analyze survey data gathered from 241 Chinese manufacturers. The results reveal interfunctional coordination and interpartner informational justice fully mediate the relationship between openness to technological innovation and SCR, and information processing capabilities and SCR are significantly and positively associated with operational performance. This article extends OIPT by elucidating the role of openness to technological innovation and enhances the SCR literature by providing empirical evidence of the important roles for information processing capabilities. The findings provide a unique information processing perspective to help managers broaden their solutions against disruptive events, and thus avoid or minimize potential negative impacts on firms.